Raising Presidents and Senators

Photo Credit: online pic.

Political ambition. What do you want to be when you grow up? Prime Minister. German Chancellor. U.S. President. Senator. Member of Parliament. Governor.

Kids’ answers are not carved in stone because they fluctuate. They depend on many factors such as age, current interest, what is in vogue socially or parental influence.

If kids demonstrate consistency in political ambition from let’s say ten to  teenage years, parents can help support them in various ways. It’s easier if parents are congressmen, congresswomen, premiers or mayors. Kids get involved in distributing posters, smiling and shaking hands, public speaking and dealing with the media at an early age.  

How can parents support kids who are convinced that they want to be politicians? It’s obvious. They start with the basics: respect your parents, women, people who don’t look like you, poor people and rich people, understand various religions and be careful what you say to your friends in private. They might blackmail you when you run for president.

Photo: Nonqaba waka Msimang.

The internet. Parents should stress that podcasts, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and all social media, have made the private domain, public. Photos with no clothes on, what kids say about women or a religious group in 2020, will come back to haunt them 20 years down the road, when they are running for parliament.

The problem is that most of the time, parents are not aware that kids are active on social media, unless they say, ‘Mum/dad can you follow me on YouTube?’ Despite all that, parents should still give the standard advice: what you say or do in your youth, might spoil your future.

Parents have many examples to support that. Justin Trudeau, Canada’s Prime Minister is a case in point. In 2019, during his bid for a second term as head of state, a 2001 photo of him in blackface, when he was 29, hit the internet.

Very few people knew about the internet in 2001, but there were cameras. They immortalized the blackface image and recycled it 18 years later. Justin Trudeau first became Prime Minister in 2015. There were no reports of such a picture then.

Did he have any political ambition in 2001? Obviously not, otherwise he wouldn’t have painted his face black for a costume party. It was offensive to black people then and now, but was acceptable in certain social circles. Not anymore.

Kids know more about the internet than their parents. Therefore, they might not heed the advice about how to behave on social media.

However, kids who want to be future mayors or presidents should remember it: what you say or the photos you post online in your youth, might damage your future.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.